Image matting is the process of extracting an object of interest (e.g., a foreground object) from its background an important task in image and video editing. Image matting may be used for a variety of different purposes, such as to extract an object for placement with a different background image. Current techniques exist that may be used to determine which pixels belong to the foreground object and which pixels are part of the background. In particular, many current approaches generally estimate foreground and background colors based on color values of nearby pixels, where they are known, or perform iterative nonlinear estimation by alternating foreground and background color estimation with alpha estimation. Conventional matting operations, however, could result in errors in describing certain portions of images that are more difficult to identify as belonging to the background or foreground of the image.